I have spent the last forty-eight hours watching the world tear itself apart at the seams, and frankly, I am bored. The news cycle, a vomiting ouroboros of stupidity, has gifted us a new vignette of hopelessness: Keir Starmer, a man with the charisma of a damp paper towel, frantically dialing Donald Trump, a man whose geopolitical strategy resembles a chimpanzee trying to repair a wristwatch with a hammer. We are told by the breathless stenographers of the BBC that this phone call comes amidst a "blitz" of overseas activity and the seizure of a ship. They report this as if it is diplomacy. I report it as the heat death of competence.

Let us start with the context, shall we? A ship has been seized. In a sane world, this would be a matter of international law, a crisis requiring nuanced leverage and quiet strength. In our timeline, the darkest and stupidest of all possible timelines, it is merely the opening act for a vaudeville routine between London and Washington. The seizure caps an "extraordinary few days," according to the political editors who still possess the capacity to be surprised by human folly. I lost that capacity somewhere around 2016. There is nothing extraordinary about chaos when chaos is the business model of the Western world. The only extraordinary thing is that anyone expects a phone call between these two distinct archetypes of failure to resolve anything.

Picture the scene. On one end of the line, you have Sir Keir Starmer. The Labour leader—or Prime Minister, or Manager of the Decline, whatever title he is wearing this week—desperately trying to project the image of the "adult in the room." Starmer’s entire political identity is built on the premise that if you are boring enough, reality will stop being volatile. He believes in the institutions. He believes in the process. He believes that if he speaks in a calm, lawyerly baritone, the pirates will return the ship and the global economy will stabilize. It is a level of delusion that is almost charming, in a tragic, pathetic sort of way.

On the other end, you have Trump and his "administration," a term I use loosely to describe a collection of grievance-mongers and reality TV rejects. The BBC calls it a "blitz" of activity. That implies strategy. That implies a target. What we are witnessing is not a blitz; it is a spasm. It is the flailing of a superpower that has forgotten how to lead and has decided instead to simply break things to see where the pieces land. Trump does not care about the ship. He probably doesn't know where the ship is. He cares that the phone is ringing and that the person on the other end is begging for his attention. To Trump, international relations is not about stability; it is about dominance and the ratings. The ship is just a prop.

So they speak. And what, pray tell, is achieved? The British press, desperate to prove that the United Kingdom is still a serious country and not just a drizzly theme park for money launderers, frames this call as a reaffirmation of the "Special Relationship." This is the most enduring lie in geopolitics. The relationship is special only in the way a master interacts with a particularly obedient spaniel. Starmer calls to offer congratulations, or concern, or whatever platitude is required, and Trump accepts it as his due tribute. Meanwhile, ships are seized. Trade routes are threatened. The actual machinery of the world grinds toward conflict, totally indifferent to the pleasantries exchanged by the men in suits.

It is deeply cynical, and frankly nauseating, to watch the media treat this phone call as a substantive event. "Leaders speak," the headlines roar, as if the act of vocalizing thoughts is an achievement. We are expected to clap because the telephone lines are working. We are supposed to feel safer because the technocrat and the autocrat exchanged pleasantries while the ocean burns. But this is the state of modern governance. It is purely performative. It is a simulation of leadership designed to distract you from the fact that no one is actually at the wheel.

Starmer represents the impotence of the old order—the belief that rules still matter. Trump represents the nihilism of the new order—the belief that power is the only rule. When they speak, it is not a meeting of minds; it is a collision of two different types of uselessness. One cannot fix the problem because he is bound by a rulebook that no one else is reading; the other will not fix the problem because he benefits from the chaos. And I, Buck Valor, am forced to document this farce, watching the ship go down while the captains argue over who has the better phone plan. We deserve better, but we certainly won't get it.